Presidential

Bill Clinton born

Bill Clinton born

Author

History.com Staff

Website Name

History.com

Year Published

2010

Title

Bill Clinton born

URL

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/bill-clinton-born

Access Date

March 31, 2015

Publisher

A+E Networks

On this day in 1946, William Jefferson Blythe III is born in Hope, Arkansas. His father died in a car accident before he was born, and young Bill later took the last name of his stepfather, Roger Clinton. In 1992, Bill Clinton would be elected as the 42nd president of the United States.

By his own account, Clinton was inspired to enter politics after meeting President John F. Kennedy at the White House as a high school student. He attended Georgetown University and won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford in 1968, then received a law degree from Yale. In 1974, Clinton lost a bid for Congress in Arkansas’ Third District. He married fellow Yale Law graduate Hillary Rodham the following year; their daughter Chelsea was born in 1980.

Clinton was elected Arkansas attorney general in 1976. In 1978, at the age of 32, he became the youngest governor to be elected in the United States in four decades. Though he lost his first reelection campaign in 1980, he regained the office four years later and was reelected comfortably three more times. In 1992, he won the Democratic nomination for president. In a campaign that revolved largely around economic issues, Clinton’s youth and the promise of change won over many voters, propelling him to victory over the incumbent George H.W. Bush and upstart third-party candidate Ross Perot.

Issues that arose during the first two years of his administration–including an ethics investigation into the Clintons’ involvement with the Whitewater housing development in Arkansas and a bitter debate in Congress over Clinton’s health care initiative–helped fuel a Republican takeover of the Senate and the House of Representatives in the midterm elections of 1994. Nevertheless, the improving economic climate during Clinton’s presidency resulted in a low unemployment and inflation rate and a balanced budget (even a budget surplus), and in 1996 he became the first Democratic president since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win a second term in office.

In 1998, scandal erupted over Clinton’s alleged involvement with a young female White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. On the basis of an investigation by independent counsel Kenneth Starr, Clinton was accused of perjury and obstruction of justice over his repeated denials of the affair; he eventually apologized to his family and to the American public for his dishonesty. He became only the second U.S. president to be impeached by the House of Representatives, but was acquitted of the charges by the Senate in 1999.

Even throughout the tumult surrounding the Lewinsky affair, Clinton enjoyed high approval ratings at home. He was also popular on the world stage, confronting foreign policy challenges including war in Bosnia and Herzegovina; continuing hostility between Israelis and Palestinians; and Iraq’s refusal to comply with United Nations weapons inspections. He was praised for his peacemaking efforts in Ireland and Northern Ireland, and became the first U.S. president to visit Vietnam since the end of the Vietnam War.

After leaving the White House, Clinton remained active in global affairs and as a public speaker. He heads up the William J. Clinton Foundation, a philanthropic organization that has addressed issues such as HIV/AIDS and the environment. Meanwhile, his wife launched her own political career, winning election to the U.S. Senate from New York in 2000 and running her own presidential campaign in 2008 before accepting the position of secretary of state in the administration of Barack Obama.

Also on this day

On this day in 1909, the first race is held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, now the home of the world’s most famous motor racing competition, the Indianapolis 500.
Built on 328 acres of farmland five miles northwest of Indianapolis, Indiana, the speedway was started by local businessmen as a testing...

On this day in 1779, a Patriot force consisting of 300 men led by Major Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee assaults the defensive positions of the British at Paulus Hook, New Jersey, now known as Jersey City. Lee wins one of only eight medals awarded by Congress during the war–and...

In front of some 12,000 spectators, automotive engineer Louis Schwitzer wins the two-lap, five-mile inaugural race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis, Indiana, on August 19, 1909.
Conceived by local businessmen as a testing facility for Indiana’s growing automobile industry, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway would later become famous as the...

On the third day of the Dakota (Sioux) uprising in Minnesota, warriors debate whether they should attack a garrison inside of Fort Ridgely. Concluding that the fort was too strong, the Dakota moved on to the settlement of New Ulm, killing settlers along the way.
The uprising began when the Dakota...

The Iranian military, with the support and financial assistance of the United States government, overthrows the government of Premier Mohammed Mosaddeq and reinstates the Shah of Iran. Iran remained a solid Cold War ally of the United States until a revolution ended the Shah’s rule in 1979. Mosaddeq came to...

Yankel Rosenbaum, a visiting student from Australia, is stabbed to death by an angry mob in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York. The crowd, consisting of young black men, had been intent on seeking revenge against Jewish people for the death of seven-year-old Gavin Cato, who had been...

On this day in 2011, three men, Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, who were convicted as teenagers in 1994 of the murders of three boys in Arkansas, are released from prison in a special legal deal allowing them to maintain their innocence while acknowledging that prosecutors had sufficient...

On this day in 1980, a fire aboard a plane bound for Saudi Arabia forces an emergency landing.
The Saudi Airlines flight began in Karachi, Pakistan, headed for Jidda, Saudi Arabia, with a stopover in Riyadh. The first leg of the flight was uneventful, and the Lockheed L-1011 took off from...

During the War of 1812, the U.S. Navy frigate Constitution defeats the British frigate Guerrière in a furious engagement off the coast of Nova Scotia. Witnesses claimed that the British shot merely bounced off the Constitution‘s sides, as if the ship were made of iron rather than wood. By the...

During World War II, an Allied force of 7,000 men carry out a large daytime raid against German positions at the French seaport of Dieppe. Aided by tanks and aircraft, the commando force–made up of approximately 5,000 Canadians, 2,000 British soldiers, and a handful of American and Free French troops–gained...

In the USSR, captured American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers is sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for his confessed espionage.On May 1, 1960, Powers took off from Pakistan at the controls of an ultra-sophisticated Lockheed U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft. A CIA-employed pilot, he was to fly over some 2,000 miles...

On this day in 1993, the actors Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin marry in East Hampton, New York. The Hollywood power couple reportedly became involved on the set of the romantic comedy The Marrying Man (1991), in which they played lovers. The film was a box-office flop, as was a...

On this day in 1886, Joseph Conrad, born Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in Poland, becomes a British citizen.
Conrad’s father had been a Polish poet and patriot. He was arrested in 1861 for his political activism and exiled to northern Russia. His wife and toddler son joined him. He and his...

The Beatles took America by storm during their famous first visit, wowing the millions who watched them during their historic television appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964. But after the first great rush of stateside Beatlemania, the Beatles promptly returned to Europe, leaving their American fans to...

John Wesley Hardin, one of the bloodiest killers of the Old West, is murdered by an off-duty policeman in a saloon in El Paso, Texas.
Born in central Texas on May 26, 1853, Hardin killed his first man when he was only 15 during the violent period of post-Civil War reconstruction....

On this day in 1951, little person Eddie Gaedel makes his big league baseball debut with the St. Louis Browns, and is walked on four pitches in his one at-bat. Gaedel was the lead character in the most famous stunt ever devised by legendary owner and showman Bill Veeck.
Bill Veeck...

A Harris survey indicates that 61 percent of those polled are against calling a halt to the bombing in Vietnam. President Johnson, in a major speech at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Detroit, challenged Hanoi to respond to the limitations of the bombing campaign that he had...

Cambodia and the U.S. sign a military aid agreement worth $40 million for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1971. The equipment included small arms, ammunition, communications equipment, spare parts and training funds.

Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern attacks U.S. pacification techniques of applying “massive firepower and free-fire zones and [clearing] 6 million people out of their homes.” McGovern, a senator from South Dakota, had long been an outspoken opponent of the war in Southeast Asia and had begun calling for...

On August 19, 1919, in a break with conventional practice, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson appears personally before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to argue in favor of its ratification of the Versailles Treaty, the peace settlement that ended the First World War.
The previous July 8, Wilson had returned from Paris,...

On this day in 1934, Adolf Hitler, already chancellor, is also elected president of Germany in an unprecedented consolidation of power in the short history of the republic.
In 1932, German President Paul von Hindenburg, old, tired, and a bit senile, had won re-election as president, but had lost a considerable...